The Road Not Taken

Chapter One

       It was out of the blue as it was on that rainy, cold afternoon in mid-April, exactly one hundred days after it was settled as can really be. I was ready for Jasper, almost to the minute of him asking "Will you marry me?". I know this fact not so much because I was an overeager keen on observing trivial relationship landmarks, but because it compels me to keep track of things.      

But today was not like most of it, the number of days I'm with Jasper before I saw him smack-dab in the middle of the crosswalk of Mitchell street and memories of the past rose anew.    

From the outside, it was only a mundane, urban snapshot: two seeming strangers, with little in common but their flimsy black umbrellas, passing in an intersection, making fleeting eye contact, and exchanging stiff but not unfriendly hellos before moving on their way.      

But inside was a very different story. Inside, I was reeling, churning, breathless as I made it onto the safety of the curb and into a restaurant and bar packed in their outside lounge with people taking a chance that the sudden rain would go away. Like seeing a ghost, I thought, one of those expressions I've heard a thousand times but never fully registered until that moment. I closed my umbrella and unzipped my coat, my heart still pounding. As I watched a waitress  wipe down a table with hard, expert, I wondered why I was so startled by the encounter when there was something that seemed utterly inevitable about the moment.      

After what seemed like a long time, I slid into a blue velvet booth in the back corner of the restaurant and vowed never to speak of it. To share my feelings with a friend would constitute an act of disloyalty to my fiancé. To tell my very cynical best friend, Sofia, might unleash a storm of caustic remarks prior marriage and commitments. And to tell Jasper would be some combination of stupid, self-destructive, and hurtful. I was bothered by the lie of omission, a black mark on our relationship, but decided it was for the best.      

"What can I get you?" the waitress, whose name tag read Lilian, asked me. She had an almost straight blonde hair with the exception of its curly ends and a smattering of freckles, and I thought, The sun will come out tomorrow. I asked for a coffee and a bagel with cream cheese.    

"Sure thing," she said, giving me a pleasant nod.    

I smiled and thanked her. Then, as she turned toward the kitchen, I exhaled and closed my eyes, focusing on one thing: how much I loved Jasper. I loved everything about him, including the things that would have exasperated most girls. I found it endearing the way he had always been troubled in pulling his ears whenever he felt nervous. I loved Jasper's confidence and compassion. I loved his mystique personality that matched his dark hair, fierce amber-eyed good looks. I felt lucky to be with a man who, after years with me, never missed to surprise me, not a fickle in his sense of humor and still a gentleman. Jasper loved me, and I'm not ashamed to say that this topped my reasons of why we were together, of why I loved him back.      

I let my mind drift to the night of Jasper's proposal in Puerto Prinsesa, how he had pretended to catch a rose that fallen out the bouquet I'm holding so that he could, in what clearly had been a much-rehearsed maneuver cut himself with the thorn then I noticed his fingers loose hold of a red ribbon attached to its stem with a ring that he managed to slip in its knot, retrieve it and appear on bended knee. I remember sipping wine, my ring sparkling in the firelight, as I thought, This is it. This is the moment every girl dreams of. This is the moment I have been dreaming of and planning for and counting on.      

Lilian brought my coffee, and I wrapped my hands around the hot, heavy mug. I raised it to my lips, took a long sip, and thought of the one hundred days since our engagement- long days of parties and showers and whirlwind wedding plans. I thought of the September drawing near all leading to that magical day.      

I thought of the first time Jasper had held my hands, our sunset strolls, the candlelit dinners, laughing at all the small things that had gone awry. But the best of it was one particularly vivid morning we've exchange words, and how it all started. I trained my mind on these details. All the details that comprised our days together.      

Yet by the time Lilian brought the toasted bagel, I was back in that intersection, my heart thudding again. I suddenly knew that in spite of how happy I was to be spending my life with Jasper, I wouldn't soon forget that moment, that tightness in my throat as I saw his face–again. Even though I desperately wanted to forget it.      

I sheepishly glanced at my reflection in the mirrored wall beside my booth. I had no business worrying about my appearance, and even less business feeling triumphant upon the discovery that I was, against all odds on an afternoon of running errands in the rain, still seemingly in shape. Nothing else.    

And that's when my cellphone rang and I heard his voice. A voice I hadn't heard in years.      

"Was that really you?" he asked me. His voice was even deeper than I remembered, but otherwise it was like stepping back in time. Like finishing a conversation only hours old.      

"Yes," I said.      

"So," he said. Then, after a considerable silence, one I stubbornly refused to fill, he added, "I guess some things don't change."        

"Yes," I said again. Because as much as I didn't want to admit it, he was sure right about that. This is it.